News
by J Plash
Summary: Had Bella been changed according to plan, what would it have meant to Edward? The pain that is knowing he was right. The madness that is knowing there's nothing he can do. Written well before the release of Breaking Dawn, and thus now AU. Edward-centric.


A/N: This fic is a brief AU, as of Breaking Dawn. Written about a year ago (when it was not AU :P) for the challenge prompt 'news'. To my regular readers, hope this makes up a little for the lack of a chapter this week (yeah, I know, it doesn't really :P But it's something, at least ;D)!

An 'if things had gone to plan, they'd gotten married, changed Bella, she'd been a normal thirsty vampire and so on' AU :)

Reviews much appreciated :)

(oh, and I'm wearing Bella's engagement ring at last :D Arrived this morning :) )

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News

_**LOCAL TRAGEDY – FORKS MOURNS LOSS**_

_The staff of the _Forks Forum_ are deeply saddened today by a disastrous accident both distant and close to home. Families received a call late yesterday from authorities reporting the tragic deaths in a light plane crash of Isabella Swan (18) and Edward Cullen (18), both local residents of Forks, WA. The tragedy of this accident is only enhanced by its timing – the deceased were newlyweds, honeymooning in Europe. In what must have started out as a romantic joy flight over the French countryside, all three people inside the plane were killed, the pilot's body so severely incinerated by the crash that no identification could be made. Many Forks residents were close to the deceased—Isabella was the only daughter of the Forks Police Chief, Charlie Swan, and Edward was part of the large Cullen family, three-year residents of the area. Dr Carlisle Cullen is chief surgeon at the Forks Community Hospital. The _Forks Forum_ joins the people of Forks in mourning this terrible loss. Our sympathies and prayers are with the families at this hardest of times, as we pray that these two promising young people, cut so soon from this world, have found a more glorious place in the hands of God._

Edward forced himself to grip his own knees rather than the paper, already ripped from days of tension.

_It's not true_, he mouthed silently to himself, teeth gritted. It was instinct now not to whisper as he would have as a human—whispering was as good as shouting in a vampire household. _It's not true. She didn't really…she's not really dead._

But she was. And she had. And it hadn't been a cruel accident of the kind dramatically laid out in the article, a touch more sadness (and amateurism, and religion) evident than one might find in a less personal, greater circulation big city paper. It hadn't been an accident at all. It has been him. Them. It. Her whole future wiped from the page in his inability to say no. In his not wanting to say no. In his needing her. Forever.

Dead or alive.

He felt the growl rising in his throat and forced it down. His family was used to his anger, and more than used to it being directed at himself. Bella, however, was upstairs with Alice, going moderately unwillingly through the new wardrobe that Alice had purchased for his wife's slightly reshaped, though no less glorious, vampire body.

Edward refused to make a sound as he carefully folded the five-day-old paper in half. He had given up on quashing the hole screaming somewhere inside of him—somewhere that he could not pinpoint, because it seemed to engulf everything of which he was aware—but he would not let it express itself in any way that might reveal it to Bella. There was nothing to be done, not anymore. The crime had been committed—the sin laid down in stone. That might not halt the agony burning through him, but it meant that there was no longer any benefit to letting Bella see it, and if Edward had always been determined not to hurt Bella, he was more so now than ever.

He briefly considered tearing out just the article on…he clenched his jaw and made himself think it…Bella's death, but decided quickly against it. The day should last in its entirety, for all of time immemorial. Every insignificant event, each dutifully reported in the next day's paper. The events that mattered most, of course, would live ageless in Edward's mind, but somehow it seemed right to save the paper. He wanted, absurdly, some distant person to look into a museum case in two-hundred years, two-thousand years time and see 'the events of the day that Isabella Marie Swan lost her life'. Men and women and children—'_can you imagine? The paper was reporting the textbook rush and the football results and a successful fishing day on the day that Isabella Swan was killed! How astonishing!_' Edward was aware that his thoughts were absurd…no, insane. This felt too normal, too expected, however, for him to object. He was going insane, he knew this instinctively, silently. For every bit that he adored Bella, for every part of him that knew he was blessed to have her for the rest of eternity, and especially for every bit that knew that she was glad as well, there was a part of Edward going mad with guilt. With hatred. With deep, utter self-loathing. And most of all, with the slow, creeping madness that was complete, total helplessness. Vampirism was not reversible. There was absolutely nothing he could do. And it was more than his mind—his heart—could comprehend. Could live-through. Could handle.

He couldn't cry. He couldn't tell anyone. He couldn't make a sound. He couldn't run, because he couldn't be away from Bella. He couldn't sleep to get away from it, and his mind was too capable of thinking about many things at once for him to ever be distracted. He couldn't punch something as he longed to, because everything collapsed beneath his fury. He couldn't throw himself at the ground or at the walls or at anything less solid than another vampire, and he couldn't do that either, because pretending to fight didn't help, and really fighting wasn't something reasonable people did. Not that he could be classified as a reasonable person. Reasonable people didn't slay angels. Steal souls. Kill their wives.

Several of the reliably tangential corners of Edward's mind were aware that his language was melodramatic, but, like his family, those parts were used to it. Edward's penchant for melodrama had been around a long while, and Bella tended to send it on overdrive. And now…now, it finally had subject matter equal to talent. No…beyond it. Nothing could express the tragedy of what he had done. No words. No actions. Not even his torn, desperate thoughts. He had perpetrated a monstrosity of an act, an act beyond the realms of human and vampire evil. He had taken the most perfect, the most loving, the most beautiful, godly, angelic, divine soul in all of Creation and not corrupted it, not injured it, not attempted to harm it, but utterly destroyed it—wiped it from the universe so thoroughly that it might never have existed at all. He had killed the most precious of God's works, a masterpiece of proportions beyond the imagination.

He wanted to scream. He wanted to hurl himself from great heights and shatter into a thousand pieces. He wanted to cling to Bella and cry until some miracle gave her back all he had taken. He wanted to mark in some small way the horror that had taken place here. And there was nothing. Nothing but a slightly torn, crumpled newspaper. A notice of a memorial ceremony from a few days later—the body was too damaged to be returned home, the explanation easily lied. Nothing but him and the storm raging like Lear's chaos in his own mind.

Tucking the paper easily out of sight, Edward closed his eyes, softly as he could, and tried to focus only on breathing. He considered carefully when the word came to him—the one thing he could say—and ran over every possibility before he let it escape. The tiniest blessed relief.

His lips barely parted. "Bella."

He knew the others could hear the whisper, but nothing in his wife's name could give away his misery, at least not to anyone who didn't already know. He wasn't sure whether he wanted Bella to come running or not at her name— he didn't want to risk her seeing beneath his masterfully forced smile, but the desperate need to hold her was rapidly overwhelming him, driving the madness deeper into his tumbling mind.

She didn't come. "Was that Edward…?" she asked Alice upstairs, tentative, not trusting her still relatively new hearing.

Alice's thoughts were dark—she knew he was losing his mind. She kept her voice light. "He says your name a lot. Ignore him."

"Okay…" And he couldn't hear her thoughts, but he knew she was groaning at the prospect of staying upstairs with Alice and the wardrobe.

It mattered surprisingly little that she didn't come. He unfolded the newspaper again as he stepped outside, letting the sun show up the tiny creases where he'd had the paper folded.

_LOCAL TRAGEDY – FORKS MOURNS LOSS._

_The staff of the Forks Forum…_

Edward knew he was losing his mind. He was no longer surprised.

ooo

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A/N: So that's a little depressing, but just think, it doesn't really happen, Breaking Dawn does :P Sorry again to regular readers--I shall have the MN chapter up next week! It's a lot of dialogue, and writing the other Cullens always takes me a little longer 'cause they don't live in my head like Edward does.

Thanks for reading, and please review!


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